The one encouraging thing to take from the imminent passage of the mandatory sexual assault law in Virginia is that we finally have an arbitrary abortion regulation that is highly unpopular.

The First Rule of Social Conservatism, of course, is that social conservatism is much more popular when applied to other people than for yourself. (Perhaps we could call this “Newt’s Law.”) There’s a reason that proponents of “traditional marriage” focus on same-sex marriage rather than, say, no-fault divorce. Abortion regulations that apply burdens to women equally are always going to be unpopular unless there’s an obvious way around them.

Comments (9)

But this is about “Religious Freedom” and the 1st Amendment, isn’t it?

It’s surprising the number of Christian people who believe in the “virgin birth” of Jesus Christ, but who are willing to have the government vaginally penetrate women to verify that they’re pregnant, and prove it to them, before granting them an abortion.
No, upon further reflection, actually, it isn’t…

I bet Roman leaders in territories wish that rule was around during the reign of Augustus, so they could have checked out Mary’s claim.

Injunction pending adjudication + appeals means everyone wins. The rightwing politicians can carnival bark to their voters that they did everything they could until those ‘activist’ judges took their choice away from them, while women can remain unraped by the state for a little while.

Remember there are very few people that actually like rightwing policy, since it helps only a very few people. Pretending that they can create a workable system actually sort of helps them.

I mean, clearly it was a slap at the minority populations near the coast, or in Richmond, but in point of fact, study after study shows that rates of abortions among white teens and young women are about as high as in minority groups (higher, even, than in recent Latina immigrants).

So when Ellie Mae gets knocked up by Jethro Bodine, who you think is going to hear about the whole scoping thing?

Abortion regulations that apply burdens to women equally are always going to be unpopular unless there’s an obvious way around them.

Well, the wealthiest part of the state is right next to two jurisdictions (DC and Maryland) that do not have such onerous rules. People in Richmond and Hampton Roads will have fewer alternatives, though.